Tag: 12.01.16

What Went Wrong With The Met Opera’s Commissioning Program?

If you start handing out $50,000 commissions to major artists, there’s not a lot of excuse for coming up almost completely empty-handed at the end of a decade. Muhly’s “Two Boys,” which began under the program’s auspices, made it to the Met’s main stage; everything else was either rejected (like Rufus Wainwright’s “Prima Donna”), fell through, or simply withered on the vine, and no new blood has been added to the pipeline for years.

Theatre Artists Talk About What Comes Next For Theatre In The Trump Era

“We tell stories. As directors, we stand beside speakers with narratives other than our own and ask them to tell us what they see so we can build a telling of that narrative with sufficient doors and windows for an audience of wild multiplicity to all walk inside a shared moment of human condition. Samuel Johnson said that the human mind, once expanded by a new idea, does not retract to its original size. Nor, I think, does the heart. And all I know to do right now is the work of expanding the heart.”

The Elusive Martha Argerich Sits Down To Talk With Anne Midgette

“Argerich’s is a story about someone with superhuman gifts trying to find a way to live a normal life. Many musicians live a life of monkish order, focusing on the discipline of music. Argerich, by contrast, has seemed to go out of her way to be disorganized. She’s so given to canceling performances, sometimes at the last minute, that she long ago stopped signing contracts: Presenters who want her have to take the risk. And her personal life has been turbulent. The three daughters by three men are one illustration of a life filled with relationships; over and over, she has established veritable communes of young musicians and non-musicians who have wandered into her large, chaotic houses.”

The Problem With Concert Music Reaching For Political And Social Relevance

“What often seems to go unasked is: ‘Who is it for?’ … It’s unlikely that victims of gun violence will draw solace from [a percussion concert], or that grass-roots members of the National Rifle Association will come out of it reconciled with the idea of tighter controls. … [And] how many police commissioners send their law enforcement officials to the opera house for sensitivity training?”

New York Film Critics Circle Continues The Love For ‘Moonlight’ And ‘Manchester By The Sea’ – Except For Best Picture

“[They] gave three apiece to each movie, … But lest we forget that there is a beloved modern-day musical starring charming actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling also campaigning vigorously for critical attention, Damien Chazelle’s La La Land snuck in at the tail end of voting to win Best Picture.”

And Another Daily Newspaper Cuts Its Last Full-time Arts Writer

This time the Austin Statesman. “In an email exchange this week, Statesman Editor Debbie Hiott confirmed that, beginning in 2017, the local daily will no longer ‘have a dedicated reporter covering only the visual and performing arts.’ She attributed the move to a familiar culprit: the long, steady drop-off of advertising income that’s had mainstream newspapers across the country cutting back staff and coverage until they’re practically on life support.”